About Me

I have lived all over the world- Korea, Indonesia, London, Scotland, and across New Zealand from Northland to Marlborough, Canterbury, and now the West Coast. I am not afraid of change or of starting again. The one thing that has always stayed constant in my life is writing and reading.

I began writing in school. My first full novel was written in Year 8 (Form 2, as it was then). The prompt was simple: You are in a yacht that gets caught in a whirlpool. What happens next? I wrote an entire book. My mum typed it on an old typewriter with twink for the errors. The teacher said she wanted to send it to Margaret Mahy along with another student’s work- then she left, and my manuscript went with her. It was a Goonies-style story about a secret world under the ocean.

In high school I wrote poetry. Friends would pay me to write theirs for the school portfolio. Back then, it felt easy. Now I look back and wish I still had that confidence. Every rejection as an adult brings back that same feeling from university- being one of many and never quite sure where I fit.

Years later in London, I returned to poetry while taking part in medical research trials. I would read, copy down unfamiliar words, learn them, then write poems around them. I wrote on black card with a gold pen and stuck them around my room in a crowded Leyton flat. Poetry became a way to show the self I usually hid- a reflection of my neurodivergent traits.

I went on to teach English in Korea, New Zealand, and Indonesia. During that time, I wrote another novel for teens about a Korean girl bullied in a New Zealand school and a Māori boy who challenged her assumptions about culture and strength. The publisher liked it but suggested I pay for professional editing first. I didn’t have the means. That manuscript was lost too.

In 2019 I returned to study, beginning an Honours degree in English Literature before switching to a Master of Writing. Weekly poetry and short story workshops rekindled my creative confidence. My published research on Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity gave me the push to commit fully. From that course came Crossing the Divide: Ahartae—and here we are today.

Writing has been the thread through every country, every restart, every setback. I write because worlds ask to be built, because characters insist on being heard, and because language never stops re-imagining itself.